


missile on a mission (i'm a force that you will dread)

by astralscrivener



Series: abc's of klance [12]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Black Paladin Lance (Voltron), Established Keith/Lance (Voltron), Lance: [The Score Voice] Betcha Thought That I Was Dead But I'm Not Dead, M/M, Post-Season/Series 05
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-20
Updated: 2019-12-20
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:41:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21875350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/astralscrivener/pseuds/astralscrivener
Summary: l is for loyalty.A shadowed figure appeared at the end of the hall, then, and drew Keith’s attention as it stalked forward. Keith leaned forward, at first; tried to study their build, their gait. And then they moved into a shaft of light from the broken ceiling panels, and Keith recoiled, violently, his back smacking against the floor in his surprise and sending another wave of dizzying pain over him.Keith has been a prisoner aboard Enira's base, alone, for 85 days.sequel tosorry honey (i'll just let you down), part 3 ofbare my skin, count my sins.
Relationships: Allura & Keith & Lance (Voltron), Keith/Lance (Voltron)
Series: abc's of klance [12]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/960195
Comments: 21
Kudos: 131





	missile on a mission (i'm a force that you will dread)

**Author's Note:**

> _title from stronger by the score_
> 
> so like. this wasn't going to exist.
> 
> sorry honey was going to be the last installment. a little two-parter. i had committed major character death, a fandom rite of passage. i was never going to do it again. i was going to leave it alone and just pretend it never happened. 
> 
> then s7 and 8 happened and i was so furious over what happened to lance and the show overall that i went "FUCK IT I'M WRITING A THIRD PART". so i did. this has been sitting in my drafts since april. it's december but it's here so like. yeehaw
> 
> edited as always by the lovely [nicole](https://archiveofourown.org/users/queeneevee/works)
> 
> **trigger warnings for talk of major character death, graphic injury, non-con/dub-con body modification (this is a very minor warning), talk of nausea, mentions of food/eating...i think my bases are covered and if you're not new here none of this should be surprising**

**.:loyalty:.**

He wished he could have lost track of the days spent inside of his cramped cell on Enira’s base.

He was transferred to a smaller one after that last fight, dingier than the previous one he’d shared with—with— _with Lance,_ and he winced at the memories. This new one didn’t leave him with much to do, other than carve out tallies in the wall with claws he was still getting the hang of, stave off his hunger by counting and recounting the small square ceiling panels (a solid eleven and a half, for this tiny space), try to sleep and wake himself up before the nightmares set in, before the flashbacks set in and woke him up screaming.

The soldiers gave him food once a day; no longer did they bring him to the labs. No longer did they roughhouse him. No longer did they take him for a beating against the bots on the training deck. It seemed they’d left him here to rot, and maybe he would’ve, if not for his faltering links to the Red and Black Lions keeping him going, breathing new life into his flickering fire.

He wouldn’t allow his mind to drift to the inevitable _if only_ it had contemplated in agony those first weeks after the fight.

He shifted his heavy gaze to the wall, at the tally marks, awaiting a fresh scratch to indicate another twenty-four or so hours passed, to bring the grand total to eighty-four days. Almost three months, and no closer to reunion with the team, if there was even a team left. No closer to finding Shiro, if he was still out there in space. And he’d never—never—

Keith swallowed the lump in his throat and screwed his eyes shut.

He’d cried, those first days. Hysterical scream-crying, guttural sobbing, silent mourning. He cried until he had soldiers telling him to shut up, cried late into the base’s night cycle, cried until he didn’t have a drop left in him, after he let out every last pent-up emotion, from the moment the Kerberos mission failed to the moment Lance breathed his last.

_I failed you._

He hadn’t been able to continue on with their escape plan—hadn’t retrieved the body—hadn’t given Lance a proper burial—left him to the mercy of Enira and her soldiers. Bile rose up in the back of his throat as he considered the possible ways they’d defiled his corpse in the labs he was ordered back to, while Keith was knocked out and returned to the cells.

Red and Black never gave an indication that they’d been able to feel another Voltron Lion—the status of the remaining three Paladins was lost to them, and thereby lost to Keith. The longer the time his captivity wore on, the more his hope dwindled; the team had targets on their backs from enemies across the universe. Some of these enemies would undoubtedly be too strong to fight off without all of the Lions present, and if those enemies had gotten to them… 

Keith’s head thunked against the wall as he leaned back and let loose a shuddering breath, a shiver shooting up his spine.

They kept the temperatures down here low, so low that some nights Keith stayed awake and watched his breath come out in cloudy puffs. He supposed they wanted to either kill him slowly, or they needed him alive but wanted to make sure he suffered in the process. Why he would be kept alive, he didn’t know. Experimentation, maybe. Maybe leverage, if there _was_ someone out there still searching for him.

_Doubtful._

He was supposed to cling onto that hope, but life hadn’t done anything to convince him of that. Life ripped away his mother before he ever got to know her; ripped away his father, just when he needed him most; ripped away his big brother, who’d taken him in and given him shelter against his own storm; ripped away his sunshine, brightening his darkest days. He wouldn’t have been surprised if his new home was gone, too, and then finally his life, wasting away to nothing.

Keith sighed. Maybe _that_ was it: break him, bring him down to rock bottom, and then humiliate him right before they executed him.

He wondered if he would ever find out, as he painstakingly opened his eyes and made his way toward his scratched-up wall, and carefully let his claws come out—a trait he was still getting used to when he reunited with the team in the middle of that whole clone incident, and never had the time to perfect before three months ago. He’d improved in his time in captivity; not very much, but enough to carve the eighty-fifth tally mark, a line through four of the others.

_85 days. Make it to 90._

Keith grimaced as his claws retracted and he curled up into a ball against the wall to try and fight off the oncoming cold, to brace himself against the wash of darkness that made its way closer as one-by-one, the lights in the hallway leading down to his cell blinked out.

He didn’t know when he fell asleep—just knew that he woke up some short time later to the echoes of footsteps in this empty cell block.

He only knew the time was short because the lights were still extinguished, and he automatically began shivering, despite his best attempts to remain still—some of his worst nights, he spent upwards of a full half hour convulsing because of how cold he was, how undernourished he was, how _sick and exhausted_ …

The footsteps grew louder, and something pooled in Keith’s stomach. He was the only one here—soldiers never came for him at this hour. Something had happened, then—he was going to be beaten or moved or probably both. Tentative hope surged up in his chest, abruptly, and Keith couldn’t stamp down on it quick enough. Maybe the team was coming—maybe there was a rescue mission being staged right now, maybe he had a chance.

A shadowed figure appeared at the end of the hall, then, and drew Keith’s attention as it stalked forward. Keith leaned forward, at first; tried to study their build, their gait. And then they moved into a shaft of light from the broken ceiling panels, and Keith recoiled, violently, his back smacking against the floor in his surprise and sending another wave of dizzying pain over him.

_This isn’t real._

_I have to be dreaming._

Because the last Keith had seen that face, it’d been frozen in a scream he couldn’t scrub from his mind no matter how hard he tried, wide and unseeing eyes that plagued his waking and slumbering hours.

The steps only got louder and more grating as Lance— _not Lance, there’s no way that’s Lance_ —kept moving forward, and Keith scrabbled backwards until he hit the wall at the opposite end of his cell, aching body protesting every action. He watched, shrinking in on himself, as Lance slowed to a stop at the door to his cell, carrying neither a weapon nor keys, but a food tray.

His face was blank, for a moment.

_Wake up, Keith._

Not the blankness of indifference, not the blankness of forgetfulness.

_You’re just hallucinating, or dreaming, or…or something. Snap out of it._

Keith’s heart beat hard enough to break his ribs as he let his eyes lock onto Lance’s—not Lance’s—Hallucination Lance’s—while Lance stared right back at him.

Lance, covered with faded white scars and burn marks, one eye lighter than the other and a section of his eyebrow missing, hair curlier and unrulier than it had been when they’d last been with each other, wearing the uniform of one of Enira’s Galra soldiers.

Then he dropped into a crouch, and slid the tray through rectangular hole in the bottom of the door, not once breaking their gaze. Then he rose back to his feet, whispered something, and turned and walked away; Keith didn’t dare move until the last sounds of him faded, until he thought he heard a door opening and hissing shut.

_I’m sorry._

He—he’d heard that right, right? If he’d truly heard anything at all?

He had to have heard _something_ ; the tray on the ground in front of him seemed real, as did the meager food sitting on it. Regardless, though, it was _food_ , an extra portion. Keith carefully crawled toward it, and his eyes flicked to something peeking out from underneath the bowl of gray _whatever_ sitting on top of the tray. Carefully, he picked the bowl up and set it aside, and found a strip of paper no larger than one from a fortune cookie tucked underneath.

_2 days, lots to explain, sorry -L_

Keith read it over several more times until his hands shook and he dropped the paper, because that was Lance’s scrawl, that had been Lance’s face— _this is a trap, Keith. They’re baiting you_ —but were they? Why do this to him after three months? Why not do this to him before, when his hope was higher?

_Because they want you in unfixable pieces._

Okay, fine—but why the _food?_

Keith finally set the piece of paper aside and reached for the bowl, lifted it to his face and sniffed it; it smelled the same as every other meal he was allowed. If they’d drugged it—poisoned it, maybe—he couldn’t smell it, and his sense of smell had gotten sharper since reconnecting to more of his Galra traits. And it was _food_ , and he was fucking _hungry._

He tilted the bowl and sipped it down, the gray sludge, until it was gone, only a few chunky dregs left behind. He shuddered immediately after, nothing unusual, and then set the bowl back down on the tray, pushed it aside, and resumed his place against the wall. He closed his fist around the scrap of paper as he curled up, _two days_ repeating endlessly in his head, lulling him off.

When he woke up at the start of the base’s day cycle, the tray and bowl were gone, and there was a new ache in the back of his neck, but the note remained in his hand.

* * *

_Day 86. Make it to 87._

The day dragged on like the first ones had, now that Keith had some renewed fire underneath him, in him; burning through his chest, a cool breeze reinvigorating his lungs. He brushed his fingertips over the fresh carving in the wall, the start to a set that hopefully wouldn’t see completion like the other seventeen. When he curled in against the wall, he found that he kept opening his eyes, kept staring down the end of the hall.

He nearly let himself drift off when he heard the first footsteps.

At their sound, he sat up, scrubbed a hand over his eyes to clear them, blinked away what bleariness he could. Like last night, Lance’s— _Lance’s? Right?_ —footsteps were slow, each one spearing Keith with another bout of impatience, as questions seared the back of his mind, the tip of his tongue. How he’d survived—what the hell happened to him—what he was doing now—why Keith hadn’t seen him before this; _how_ and _why_ alternating in an endless stream.

He was on his feet before he knew it, clutching the bars that made up the door to his cell as Lance stopped in front of him, face just as expressionless as it had been last night.

“Lance,” Keith breathed out.

For a moment Lance said nothing—didn’t move—continued his staring—until he gently wrapped his hands over Keith’s. The warmth of his hands— _warmth, life, Lance in the flesh_ —bled through the gloves he wore, as he leaned forward, pressed his forehead against the bars. Keith mimicked his actions, and patches of their skin met.

“Tell me this is real,” Keith whispered.

“It is.”

Lance’s voice was quiet and shot to hell, scratchy and gravelly; Keith almost didn’t want to know how it got that way, but then again, the _not knowing_ would surely kill him. He needed an explanation if he wanted a remedy— _if he’s even real, Keith. If he’s not a shapeshifter or a liar._

He couldn’t just demand Lance prove it, not when he knew Enira had access to their minds, their memories; when the team had already been duped by a clone before. And that thought almost made Keith draw back, but something— _something_ —kept him anchored to his spot, kept him anchored to the boy in front of him.

“I’m sorry,” Lance managed after that, each word an effort to speak.

“Me too,” Keith said. “But we’ll talk tomorrow?”

“Back in the castle,” Lance answered. “Then I’ll tell you about the time I was seven and fell off my bike and it was still somehow more painful than this.”

_There he is._

Enira would never think to pull on a childhood memory so seemingly useless; wouldn’t have a soldier injure his throat just by speaking about something so trivial; but Lance _would_ , if it meant calming Keith down and drawing a smile out of him, the same way he told _ridiculous_ stories to the team when they were gathered in the lounge after one of their more harrowing missions…

Keith slowly reached through the bars as much as he could, slide his hand out from underneath Lance’s and cupped his face.

“I’m so, so sorry.”

_That hit was meant for me._

But there was something simmering underneath Lance’s expression, some emotion trying to bubble to the surface. He smiled wistfully, and leaned into Keith’s touch.

“Not your fault.” Keith almost couldn’t hear Lance, he spoke so quietly, and then Lance pulled back. “Whatever happens tomorrow afternoon, please just go with it. I’m going to get you out of here, I prom—” He coughed, harshly, and Keith caught sight of the blood when he pulled his hand away from his mouth, “I promise.”

Keith didn’t get the chance to respond before Lance turned on his heel and walked away. Keith watched him go, watched him disappear and leave Keith alone in the dark, the same slow steps he’d come down here with.

_You’re hurt._

Part of him cursed the thought. Obviously he’d be hurt, seeing as Keith had thought Lance was dead for two and a half months, up until the night before. The other part of him wondered how recent these injuries were, how long Lance had been _alive again_ , if this was even Lance at all…if his consciousness hadn’t been transferred to some clone body, if that was the same Lance Keith had come here with…

Keith reached one arm through the bars on his cell door as far as he could, clung onto them and let his body lean into them, everything in him aching for one moment longer, the ability to actually hold Lance again. Sure, they hadn’t been safe when they were first captured, but they’d had each other. They had been allowed to be at each other’s side, to get through the nights together.

_And what have your nights been like, Lance?_

But Keith—he’d find out. Back on the castleship, _tomorrow._

_Tomorrow._ It reverberated in his mind, in his bones and blood, a promise he breathed as he took his place on the floor again, scrunched in on himself like every other night to ward off the cold. He held his hand to his face like he could still feel Lance’s cheek underneath it, let the last of the warmth fade as the cold took over, and sleep came crashing over his head.

* * *

The noises began right smack in the middle of the base’s afternoon cycle, just like Lance had said.

Keith raised his lolling head to gunfire and robotic shouting—sentries, probably taking guard rotations on this block, meaning the Galra themselves only ever came around to taunt Keith at mealtime. No wonder Lance had been able to slip past them the last two nights, then, if they were programmed to be on a set schedule—easily learned, easily worked around, easily destroyed now, as one head flew down the hall and smacked into the wall near Keith’s cell.

Keith flinched back at it, and then again at the sound of feet slapping the floor. Two pairs, this time, one just slightly slower than the other.

Two figures emerged from the smoke, matching quick strides—one with a rifle, and one with a whip, clutching two other bayards; one in a soldier’s uniform, and one in the outfit of a Paladin.

“Allura? Lance?” Keith staggered to unsteady feet as Allura and Lance set upon his door—Lance shot the lock point-blank, and it fell away, clattering against the floor, while the door swung open with a squeak. Allura raced inside while Lance posted himself at the entrance, rifle pointed at the far end of the hall.

“Keith!”

Allura swept him into a hug, a near-foreign feeling after the last three months of loneliness and isolation, and after two days of only fleeting touches between himself and Lance. And then the hug was gone, contact far too short for Keith’s liking as she thrust the red and black bayards into his hands.

“Don’t worry about your armor,” she explained hastily. “It doesn’t matter, we can make more suits. _These_ cannot be replicated in the same manner.”

Both bayards.

Keith looked at Lance again, looked at the gun in his hands and found that it wasn’t _his_ rifle—it was a standard soldier’s rifle. His eyes traveled to Lance’s face and found his jaw in a harsh set, eyes narrowed, back rod-straight.

“What happened? H-How—?”

“Lance contacted us,” Allura said, voice quieter. “He managed to find the coordinates of the base where Shiro’s actually being held—Pidge and Hunk are en route as we speak. Then he helped _me_ to sneak in here, and now we’re—”

“You have to go,” Lance cut in, voice still scraping his throat, hollow. “I’ll meet up with you as soon as I can.”

He scanned the area one more time, and then started moving back toward the end of the hall when Keith shoved one of the bayards at Allura to free up his hand, and then grabbed Lance’s wrist and pulled him back; Lance sighed and halted, kept his head down while Keith’s gaze pierced him.

“Hold on, what do you mean _you’ll meet back up with us?_ Are you not coming with us?”

Lance didn’t meet his eyes right away. Cautiously, he glanced at Allura, who frowned at him, looked at Keith, allowed her frown to deepen, and then she let her bayard change form, from a whip to a two-ended glaive.

“We have a bit of time,” she said. “I’ll stand guard, but Lance, I _also_ expected to be rescuing _both of you_ , not to mention we need three pilots—”

“I already planned it.” Another interruption, and this time, Lance screwed his eyes shut, blew out a harsh breath. “If Red senses Keith in danger, then he’ll follow. Keith takes Black, you take Blue, you’ll probably still have time to go help Hunk and Pidge, if they don’t already rescue Shiro by the time you get back. Five pilots, and that’s all you need.”

“What do you mean _senses Keith in danger_ —?”

“Are you _not coming back with us?_ ”

Keith’s grip on Lance’s wrist turned crushing while his eyes misted, stung. Lance dragged in another breath and let it go, forced himself to look at Keith.

“I can’t,” he whispered. “It’s too dangerous for the team, and you’ve all suffered enough at my hands.”

“Too _dangerous?_ We’re all standing in a Galra prison base right now!” Allura pointed out in a shout-whisper.

Lance turned slightly, to cast a long look at her, before averting his eyes back to the floor. “It’s…there’s a long story, but I…there’s a chip. Tracking device. In me. I can’t remove it without…” His gaze went distant, shoulders slumping, and the rest of his sentence was barely audible: “I can’t remove it without dying in the process.”

Keith wasn’t sure he was breathing anymore.

His hand fell away from Lance’s wrist, and he stumbled a step back. Lance let one hand go of his rifle and reached out to grasp Keith’s elbow to steady him—and still, he held him at an arm’s length, careful not to get too close, careful to distance himself, _please stop doing that, please let me be close to you._

“Enira must’ve planted it at some point after the fight, down in the labs. She put one into you, too,” Lance said, squeezing Keith’s arm, “but not as complex as mine. I cut yours out that night I came down with the food…and I’m sorry about that.”

Keith’s head snapped up, and his eyes narrowed. “Did you knock me out?”

Allura scowled. “Is now _really_ the time to get into a moral debate? He cut a tracker out of you.”

Lance grimaced, squeezed Keith’s arm again to draw his attention back. “You were already in pain and hadn’t eaten, I needed to get more food in you and make sure you didn’t feel a thing, and the less you knew, the better. As it is, I didn’t intend for, y’know…” He nodded to Keith, to Allura, to the cell around them. “This. Questioning. I have to stay, I have to cover your escape and make it look like I’m doing my job.”

“Your job?” Keith and Allura questioned at the same time.

Lance’s eyes darkened, clouded. “There’s…a lot, that’s happened. But I did…I did what I could, I planted clues, left openings…sabotage from the inside. And now I’m giving you two the chance to _get out of here unscathed_. I can find my way out of here myself, I’ve already got a plan devised, it should only take me a couple more days…”

“Liar,” Keith breathed out. “The tracker—you just—you said the tracker’s why you can’t leave, and you can’t pull that thing out yourself. You’re…you’re not coming back at all.” When Lance froze, Keith continued. “You can’t lie to me, Lance. Maybe to others, but not to me.”

He couldn’t bring himself to say the words out loud, in front of Allura, potentially in the earshot of any soldiers that might’ve been slinking their way. He couldn’t bring himself to say _this is because you think you’re not good enough, this is because you think you failed as the Black Paladin. You want to prove yourself. You want to take the fall for us._

“You’re coming back with us,” Keith decided. “As _your right hand_ and former Black Paladin, that’s not a suggestion, that’s a fucking order.”

“Pidge and Coran will likely be able to figure out how to remove the tracker with the pod’s aid, and we’re more than capable of taking on anyone who follows, if we get the whole team back together,” Allura added, stepping back into the cell. She stepped up to Lance and poked him in the chest. “Which, we _are_ , because of _you_.”

Lance looked between them, as Allura stuck out her hand and offered up the black bayard to Lance. He met Keith’s eyes, and Keith nodded.

“I told you, I wasn’t going to leave you alone.” His voice dropped to a whisper, soft where he’d been stern moments ago. “Remember that, Sharpshooter? It’s Lance _and_ Keith.”

Lance swallowed the lump building in his throat. “Side-by-side.”

Keith took the gun out of Lance’s other hand, set it on the ground, twined their fingers. “Hand-in-hand.”

“Together against the universe.”

“That’s sweet,” Allura remarked, a note of exasperation in her voice, “but this really isn’t the time. Lance, you said you had a plan?”

Lance nodded, extricated himself from Keith’s grasp. He looked down at his bayard; after a few moments, it slowly transformed into his rifle, molding to his grip. Lance smiled wistfully down at it, and then lifted his eyes again.

“Enira thinks I’m down here to bring Keith to a beating,” he said. “She doesn’t know I disabled security in the hangar bays _or_ shut down the sensors tuned into the Voltron Lions—she doesn’t know Allura’s here, and won’t be prepared for an ambush, because we _are_ going to run into her between here and the hangars where Red and Black are.”

He moved to rub his throat when he remembered the armor he was wearing, the armor that covered up and protected his neck. Then he let his hand drop back down to his side, while Keith stared, heart in his throat, so many questions racing through his head—what he’d seen in the last three months, what he’d done, why Enira believed he’d ever willingly lead Keith to a _beating_ …

_All questions that can be answered when you’re safe._

As much as Lance probably believed he’d failed Keith, Keith failed him all the same. Failed to move, and forced Lance’s hand—body—

_Thoughts aside._

Keith tucked it away. Locked it up. Buried it. And it came so easily to him, a habit he hadn’t touched in over a year, a habit he hadn’t been so deep into since the Garrison. But it had allowed him to survive then, and it would allow him to survive now as he let his own bayard transform into a sword, Red’s energy wrapping around him, scorching.

Lance turned, then, and cast another look at Keith, and for a moment Keith’s mind juxtaposed it over the confident smile Lance had given him standing on Black’s gangway, right before they’d embarked on this mission. Casual, tossed over his shoulder along with the flirtiest wink he could muster, a wink promising celebratory shenanigans when they came back with Shiro—because they were _supposed to_.

And then they’d been captured.

And tortured.

And Lance had died.

Died—straight-up stopped existing. Keith couldn’t squander the memory of his terror no matter how hard he tried, the squeezing of his lungs and the sheer rage that’d taken him over, the feel of Red and Black’s energies crying out, searching for their severed connection.

_I failed you then. But I won’t fail you now._

“Everyone ready?” Lance asked, and Keith only realized then that they’d both been staring, and Allura hadn’t breathed a word about it. Instead, she gave them both a nod, after a beat of hesitation. Then Keith nodded and squared his shoulders, and let the last of his guilt slide away, because this wasn’t the time for dwelling; it was the time for doing, and the time for righting wrongs. “Then let’s go.”

**Author's Note:**

> there will be. one more part. eventually. i will let u guess which letter of the abc series i am using for the fourth part but just know you'll be waiting a little while
> 
> this is one of four oneshots definitely getting follow-ups/sequels, so like. there's a lot comin and a lot i'm planning for
> 
> anygay thank u for reading
> 
> [my fix-it fic (s4-8 rewrite)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15900732/chapters/37059441) || [my other fics](https://archiveofourown.org/users/astralscrivener/works) || [nicole's fics](https://archiveofourown.org/users/queeneevee/works) || [my twitter](https://twitter.com/astralscrivener) || [nicole's twitter](https://twitter.com/queen__eevee)


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